Technical Field
The instant disclosure generally relates to delivering communications to and from devices that are on-board vehicles, and, in particular, to systems and methods for facilitating communications between electronic devices via various communication networks.
Background
Currently, existing airlines and other transportation companies provide various services to mobile or wireless devices (e.g., cellular phones, smart devices, laptops, tablet computers, etc.) when such devices are on-board a vehicle while the vehicle is en route to a destination. However, the delivery of terrestrial or native features (e.g., roaming, texting, simultaneous calls, etc.) to mobile or wireless devices while a vehicle is in transit presents difficulties. Typically, to support native, terrestrial features of a mobile or wireless device in a non-terrestrial environment, cellular base stations such as “picocells” are installed on-board the vehicle, and the mobile device connects, via the cellular radio of the mobile device and the on-board cellular base stations, to an on-board network. In some cases, hardware in addition to the cellular base stations is also installed on-board the vehicle. This extraneous infrastructure is both limiting and extremely expensive. Moreover, the radio transmissions produced on-board the vehicle may interfere with ground-based cellular systems. For example, if mobile devices on-board the vehicle cannot find an adequate cellular band to which they may connect (e.g., when on-board cellular base stations are deactivated), the mobile devices will automatically increase their power, which may interfere with ground-based terrestrial cell sites as well as quickly drain the batteries of the mobile devices.
Some existing terrestrial communications systems are able to provide internet-based network connections to mobile devices while on-board a vehicle. For example, some communications systems are equipped with Wi-Fi capability that enables the mobile devices to access websites and stream multimedia. However, these communications systems are not able to provide mobile devices with terrestrial or native communication features (i.e., cellular-based communications) while the mobile devices are on-board the vehicle.
Accordingly, there is an opportunity to leverage existing communications infrastructure to facilitate cellular-based communications via electronic devices while the electronic devices are connected to a non-terrestrial communications network.